Trek of One Very Confused Guardian
by Kuroi Atropos
Summary: Pitch curses Jack, sending him to a world where no one truly believes in magic. Shame the curse didn't count on Jimmy Kirk.
1. Chapter 1

Trek of One Very Confused Guardian

By: Kuroi Atropos

Rating: Teen just to be safe

Warnings: Some slight (hopefully justified OOC)

Summary: Pitch curses Jack, sending him to a world where no one truly believes in magic. Shame the curse didn't count on Jimmy Kirk and the fact that belief can sometimes, in rare situations come from nothing.

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Chapter One

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He regarded the vast blackness with narrowed eyes, the only light a dim haze of blue from the quickly sputtering sparks that emanated from the gnarled staff clutched in his hands.

"I think this is only fair. You fed me to my fears, I will feed you to yours," the smarmy voice came from everywhere, making him twist in circles as he tried futilely to glimpse the Nightmare King in his realm.

There was a pounding on the stone doors separating him from the others, whose desperate shouts he could hear even over the darkly gleeful laughter that echoed around him after the mad spirit's taunt.

"Pitch!" Jack yelled.

"I hope you enjoy a world where no one believes, Jack."

The darkness swallowed him.

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Jack couldn't be sure what woke him up, but he jolted up from the blackness of unconsciousness to a shadowy night. He bolted up and on sheer instinct of knowing Pitch had been near him when he fell, Jack scrambled on the damp ground for his staff, ignoring the mud and moss that dirtied his hands as he brushed over various branches, rocks and leaves. He finally felt his staff and let out a small sigh of relief as his fingers closed around the familiar wood.

Jack took a closer look at his surroundings, his eyes quickly adjusting to the dimness of the forest around him, the bright moon barely glancing through dark branches stripped bare of their leaves.

How had he gotten here? The last thing that he remembered was the cave with Pitch and the other Guardians scrambling to reach where the Nightmare King had him trapped in an intricate design of spell work on the uneven stone floor, and then…..

Nothing. No, more like a sense of nothingness. A void.

Jack shook himself, slapping his cheeks to snap himself out of his reverie and turned around, taking a deep breath before reaching out with his senses to try and pinpoint his location.

He allowed his presence to seep into the air, feeling for the wind and the chill of – Jack yelped, snapping his senses back into himself and falling over in shock.

He couldn't feel any spiritual presence at all. No response…from anything. He had to leave here now!

"Wind! Can you hear me? I don't care where I am, carry me home, or to North or just answer me please!" He spun around, bordering on scared as not even a slight, comforting breeze came to wrap around him.

"WIND!" Jack howled, praying that the only thing that had been with him since he died wouldn't abandon him.

But…. it had.

Jack sank to his knees as he tried to think. This place, he didn't know what was happening here. What exactly had Pitch done? He'd said something about a world where no one believed, but how could he do that? How could that happen? Jack didn't understand—he didn't think he _could_ understand. How could everything be so _different_?

He didn't know how long he stared at the dank ground before he looked up at the moon through the trees once again, hoping to catch at least a glimpse of the Man in the Moon. He'd never directly answered Jack before, but if something had happened in that last fight with Pitch, something that made it so that Jack didn't deserve to be a Guardian or even a spirit (because what else could it be?)…he deserved an answer for that.

Jack could only glare at the bright orb for a few seconds before he cringed and looked away without even voicing the thoughts running through his head. The moon was more than silent… it almost seemed dead to his senses. Well, not really dead, but almost… and in every way that his heart told him mattered.

He couldn't put what he felt into words. He didn't know what was happening. All he knew was that somehow the Man in the Moon wasn't there, even though he could sense life in the bright orb.

As if the moon wasn't disconcerting enough on its own, the animals moving about the dense foliage didn't match what he knew either. Jack's "Hey" to an owl didn't even result in a twitch, and there was nothing spiritual in the other predators and prey that slinked through the woods. They were mindless….

Even the trees felt spiritually dead. And even with his staff, no matter how much power he poured into it, he couldn't leave patterns behind on anything.

Fighting back the worry that had knotted his stomach (that was just what Pitch wanted, for Jack to fea- NO! He would not even think the word right now!), Jack finally picked a direction and started walking. He needed to find out where he was; figure out what was happening to the world. Had Pitch finally been able to beat them all? Had he somehow reached Manny? Jack made himself stop thinking as he placed one foot in front of the other, over and over again, his staff absently tapping against various objects, just so he could confirm that yes, he was still corporeal.

After the longest walk Jack could remember taking, he stumbled out of the forest and into a clearing on a hill side.

Below him, a city spread across a valley.

Rather than a sense of relief and happiness, Jack felt the niggling sense of fear he hadn't been able to entirely control grow as he took in the obviously sleeping city, completely devoid of the trailing golden streams of Sandy's Dreamsand. Even when Sandy was busy with Guardian business, there was always Dreamsand floating in cities and towns at night, bringing the children sweet dreams.

"This is not good…." Jack muttered to himself. A slight breeze ruffled his hair as it arched up the hillside the way breezes did when they liked to play, so he tentatively tried calling out again. "Wind? Can you hear me? Are you okay? Can you answer me?" The wind seemed to linger around him a little, but nothing resolute, and there was no lilting laugh to the voice—no words or reaction—just a breeze.

Jack wrapped his arms around himself and his staff, hugging tightly for a moment as the loss of his greatest friend ripped at his soul before his eyes narrowed and he practically leapt down the hillside. He'd find something, anything…. He'd get Pitch for this as soon as he found the other Guardians or any of the other spirits that could at least point him in the right direction.

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Since he couldn't even conjure a wind that would carry him to a fence top, let alone to the roofs of the buildings, Jack was reduced to hunting for signs of Sandy, or any of the others, manually. He looked down every alley for a stray flower and in every window for a fluttering fairy or grain of golden sand.

By the time the sun started cresting over the horizon, Jack had gone from worried to downright terrified. Like most of the night, there had been nothing. Not even a hint of a Nightmare or anything more positive.

He himself could still barely frost a window and he only succeeded if he touched it for a long time and concentrated like he had to freeze an ocean. Ice and snow were out of the question. He'd also been forced to climb buildings by hand, foot and staff.

And the city itself…

The cars flew where he could not. There were no newspaper stands anywhere he could see, and media bars streamed across all the buildings, talking about ships that sailed the stars. He'd heard of such things, but only in the story books Jamie had on the shelves in his room.

The toys he'd seen in several windows went beyond anything even North could cook up. He'd seen a parent slip a tooth from under a pillow (leaving a small toy in its place) rather than a fairy or a mouse. And there were no vibrations of Bunny's warrens underground.

After the longest night in Jack's memory, he stared as the city came to life around him and wanted it to stop, to give him time to think, to figure out what Pitch had done.

Then, a child looking down at a glowing screen of something in his hand walked right through him, and it shook Jack to the core, devouring what little resistance to his mounting worry and fear he had left. Even with everything so different here, with no Man in the Moon, or North, or Tooth Fairy, he was still invisible. With a scream Jack flung his staff high, let loose the entirety of power inside of him, calling on all things cold with every ounce of strength he had.

Up high in the atmosphere, a weather satellite recognized a sudden shift in barometric pressure. There had been multiple strange wind patterns in its area within the past 12 hours, which (combined with this sudden phenomenon) triggered a warning to an analyst on the Lunar colony even as the shift in temperature was suppressed and the winds encouraged along their normal, planned paths.

Down below, a broken winter spirit fell to the ground as realization sunk in. He'd gotten a few flakes of snow, and then nothing. He really had lost his ice—the cold that had never ignored him the way the rest of the world did. So he sat there on the perfect sidewalk, staring at the ground and cried tears that didn't even freeze when they hit the pavement.

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_112 Years Later_

James T. Kirk found himself in the unusual position of pinning his Chief Engineer and main Navigator with an incredulous stare.

Normally Jim had no concerns with the experiments that his crew, especially his Senior Staff, wanted to do. However in this instance, his First Officer was looking at the two other geniuses with both eyebrows raised in Spock's Expression #12 (WTF? You are seriously lacking in common sense—or a brain—right now). He trusted his First Officer to understand the science talk that managed to escape his comprehension and give him a heads up if whatever was going on needed to be halted, and this particular Spock Expression definitely had blinking, glowing, arrows pointing at a 'Stop' sign.

It was mainly due to this almost extreme look from his first officer that he doubted the practice in trans-dimensional transport stuff (he had gotten a bit lost after they stopped talking about the actual modifications and moved into the theoretical calculations) would go off without a hitch as Scotty and Chekov had claimed.

"Scotty, you still haven't found Archer's beagle," Jim pointed out.

"Oh, aye Captain. But this might actually help! See we have this theory-"

"I can assure you that modifying an ionic field to work in conjunction with the transporters to bypass certain barriers to th-" Spock started only to actually be interrupted by Chekov.

"But Commander!" Kirk blinked while Spock re-raised the one eyebrow that had lowered as the Vulcan had transitioned into lecture mode. "We've modeled several simulations based on the instances related by The Ambassador!" Kirk sighed as Spock's eyes narrowed into Spock Expression #3 (you are this close to being nerve pinched) at the crew's capitalized moniker for the older Spock that had come through the Black Hole and the three super geniuses started off into a debate on the merits of experimenting with the transporters.

That a future version of Spock kept butting into Federation Politics and Sciences had to be one of the worst kept secrets Jim had ever seen since his attempts at hiding his less than legal mischief as a kid. The older man had little to no compunction when it came to meddling with the Universe he found himself in, especially while it concerned the Senior Staff of the Enterprise and several of the frankly weird dangers they'd apparently run into in the man's original Universe.

Kirk felt fairly sure some things wouldn't happen due to the altered world they found themselves in, but he knew several things seemed to be unavoidable. From a challenge standpoint he couldn't be sure if he was happy about most likely missing the Borg and Dominion or not.

Still some of the crazier stuff, like mirror universes, had frankly fascinated all of them, especially with the possibilities raised by Nero's intervention alone.

This interest in alternate realities was, for the most part, a good thing, and they'd had some great successes in using slightly modified com signals to help speed communications, but Jim was, well, leery to say the least about them doing anything with the transporters.

"-and see! We have this built up which shows-" Kirk focused back on the conversation to watch as Scotty plopped the device he'd been fiddling with on the Captain's desk. Kirk poked at it with a stylus, running the shape through all the designs that had crossed his desk and after coming up blank, he had to interrupt.

"Scotty, I thought that we agreed you wouldn't actually _build_ any prototypes until I signed off on them after that thing with the pink trees." The Scotsman flushed a little, and Chekov laughed as he remembered the incident that had Scotty hiding in the Jeffries Tubes for weeks from a bunch of the science department and one pissed off helmsman.

"Well, Captain, this isn't a prototype exactly…. This little thing isn't compatible with any of the ships systems, we didn't even want to bother you and the Commander if we couldn't even generate the type of Ion field we needed, since Ion technology is something we haven't played with much."

"Da, Captain! Not a prototype since it will not be used with the transporters for testing at all!" Chekov said cheerfully.

Jim sighed and poked the device with his stylus again, only to have Spock actually slap it away with Expression #2 (you're acting idiotic again, Captain) on his face. "Until we can verify the safety of the device, Captain, I would advise against jostling the unit unnecessarily."

"If it wasn't stable, Scotty and Chekov wouldn't be slinging it around, right guys?" Jim smiled up past his First Officer at the two who nodded emphatically.

"Oh, aye, Lad!" Scotty smiled, "we would nae wanna risk the Commander lynching us if anything happened to you, sir."

Jim felt the urge to drag his hand over his face, refusing to look at his First Officer.

"Okay. If this doesn't work with the transporters, what exactly does it do?"

"Well, basically it'll generate a type Ion field that'll let us modify certain beam types through it and if that works, we can try it on the transporters! On its own it doesn't really impact anything, see!" Before Kirk or Spock could say or do anything, Scotty pressed a button on the machine and a high pitched whine drowned out everything in his ready room, startling him into jumping back from his desk and knocking his chair over.

"Hey, watch it Jimmy!" A young voice came from behind him. Kirk spun, banging into his desk as Spock and the others started, his first officer going so far as to grab his shoulder and yank him bodily over the desk with his more than human strength. Pads and various office toys scattered to the floor from the force of him being dragged through them, and he kicked out to help push himself the rest of the way off the desk to stand beside Spock, ignoring the pain in his hip where it had connected with the edge of his desk.

Leaning in the corner, glaring down at Jim's fallen chair with a half-annoyed, half- worried expression, was an outline of a thin, humanoid figure. It slowly filled in before their eyes, gaining color as if the figure was having its transparency adjusted on a screen. Even after it filled out, the character appeared to be deathly pale, like a corpse frozen in the cold of space given life. It had the form of a human teenager, maybe sixteen or seventeen at the oldest, with ice white hair. It dressed in rough-hewn pants with twine wrapped around the bottoms holding the fabric tight against its legs, well up from dainty, bare feet, and a blue hoodie with nearly glowing metallic silver threads shot through it in the shape of stylized frost patterns and snowflakes.

Kirk blinked, recognizing a feeling of familiarity that solidified when the figure glanced up, and blue eyes a few shades icier than his own orbs looked on his rather blindly. Kirk spun to glare at his Chief Engineer and Navigator. "Damn it, Scotty! How did this stupid machine get inside my head?"

The two human geniuses looked torn between shrinking back from Kirk's unusual ire and jumping in front of him to protect him from the mysterious new stranger.

"Captain?" Spock asked, almost tentatively. Kirk eyed his First Officer who had yet to look away from the teen, but he knew the Vulcan enough to tell that Spock was itching to call Security.

"Spock, meet Jack Frost, my childhood imaginary friend."

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End Chapter One

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Um yeah... Not sure - please let me know if this is worth continuing.


	2. Chapter 2

Trek of One Very Confused Guardian

By: Kuroi Atropos

Rating: Teen just to be safe

Warnings: Some slight (hopefully justified OOC)

Summary: Pitch curses Jack, sending him to a world where no one truly believes in magic. Shame the curse didn't count on Jimmy Kirk and the fact that belief can sometimes, in rare situations come from nothing.

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Chapter 2

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_89 Years After Arrival_

_Jimmy sat at the edge of the lake on his Grampa Bear's farm, looking over the silver water. It had been cold enough lately that the surface was caked with a thin sheet of ice and glittered brightly in the early morning sun. With a sigh he dug a stone out from the slightly frozen mud right at the edge, uncaring of how his actions dirtied the nice white shirt and black suit jacket Ms. Tara had put him in earlier. Jimmy took careful aim and chucked the smoothed stone across the lake, watching as it skittered across the ice to hop the other bank and land right at the base of the tree with the ancient tire swing on it. _

_He clambered to his knees and started digging out another stone. It was a little different then skipping stones on the lake when it wasn't frozen, not as fun, but it was close enough for Jimmy right now. _

_It took a while and his fingers were practically frozen from the cold dirt but he managed to amass a pretty nice pile of rocks, and swiftly set about chucking them across the lake just like Grampa Bear taught him not even three months ago. Jimmy knew it was not even three months because Grampa Bear had taught him how to mark days off on the old fashioned paper calendar that was hung up by magnets on the fridge. Jimmy liked the calendar, and skipping stones, and the way Grampa Bear smiled at him when he figured things out really fast. _

_Jimmy chucked the next stone hard enough it actually chipped the ice on its first bounce. Sometimes he really didn't like figuring things out. _

_It made people look at you funny, even when they cooed at how "smart" he was and how he should "move up" to be with a class of bigger kids that liked to tease him even if they weren't really mean about it._

_And it let him figure out that since four days ago, he was all alone. Four days ago (he still marked the calendar like a good boy) his Grampa Bear had clutched his chest and Jimmy knew to get the little bottle of pills and make sure Grampa Bear ate one while he tried to call 911 like they told all the kids in movies and school. The lady had been nice to Jim even as she asked for addresses and told him what to do, but it wasn't enough._

_Jimmy knew from the sad looks the man and lady gave him that his Grampa was gone just like his Daddy and would never come back. He could figure out that even though everyone was telling how it was "fine" and that Jimmy and Sam would be taken care of, nothing would be okay. _

_Mommy wasn't coming home even though Grampa was gone, to the obvious surprise of everyone who had flocked to the house the last few days (a lot were in the uniforms that Mommy wore and that Grampa Bear was in when he was sealed into the casket). No one had believed that Old Tiberius Kirk would ever die, especially while he had Jimmy to look after. _

_Jimmy could have told them that that didn't matter if they had only asked, after all it hadn't stopped Daddy from leaving. He had figured out a long time ago that was why looking at him made Mommy sad. Jimmy made her think of Daddy and that he was gone. That was why he stayed at Grampa Bear's a lot even when Mommy was on Earth and Sammy got to stay with her._

_He had figured it out ages ago though that he was better off with Grampa Bear anyway. Grampa Bear kept letting him call him Grampa Bear even though he could now say both Grandpa and Tiberius just fine. Grampa Bear told him stories of all the wonders of the universe, read him tales from actual paper books that he said were read to him when he was little, played knights and dragons with him, cops and robbers, helped him set traps for Santa and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy (she was especially tricky, the glue wasn't even touched!) Jimmy had learned that there was always something out there, and learned that no matter what, Jimmy's Daddy was gone because he had loved Jimmy even more than Grampa Bear did. _

_And knowing that, Jimmy knew that even if he figured out that everything wasn't okay, that in spite of whatever weird looks he got, even if he had to put up with Ms. Tara's sickeningly sad looks and Sammy's exasperation with the farm not having the latest holo technology and the condescending man in the suit that was trying to figure out who would take care of them until Mommy got back, Jimmy believed that there were amazing things out there, and that he was cared about, and protected. _

_Jimmy smiled for the first time in four days, and chucked the last rock across the lake, only to jump to his feet in shock as a pained yelp came from the bushes the rock jumped the bank into. A teenage boy with weird white hair in an old fashioned blue hoodie holding a twisted looking wood staff popped out of the bushes, rubbing his arm and scowling down at where Jimmy guessed the rock was. _

_"Watch it, kid! Those things aren't exactly snowballs!" _

XXXXX

_112 Years After Arrival_

Jim was rather proud to have created a new expression on his First Officer's face, maybe he should name it 'you have obviously suffered a mental break' – nah…. That didn't quite fit….. He'd have to revisit this when he could concentrate on it more.

"Imaginary friend?" Spock asked with a slightly hesitant tone as he gazed at the figure (that didn't seem to realize it had been called on or introduced however flippantly).

Jim nodded, staring at the figure poking the fallen chair with his gnarled, hooked staff. "Yeah, it's a common mechanism for kids, human ones anyway. Sometimes they create a psychological construct to help deal with things. I had one until I turned 13, and somehow you're looking at him." He waved his hand to the teen that had obviously grown bored with the chair and had turned his attention to the desk, jumping up to sit on the false wood with one leg hanging down as he stared at one of Jim's personal pads that had been left on (the one showing the lightsaber schematics he'd been toying with in his off hours).

"Aw man, you're still on actually making one of these light swords, Jimmy?" the boy said almost resignedly. "I know that you really wanted one but you do remember the terror of your last attempt, right? I mean, not only did you knock me out for a week from dampening that blast but Mike couldn't regrow his eyebrows for a year and John was singing soprano for at least two months…."

Jim blushed as the others stopped ogling the zoned out figure on his desk and gawked at him questioningly. "I was 15 and in a bad spot and they gave me the parts knowing _full well_ what I would do with them, I _swear_!"

Chekov laughed and Scotty grinned widely while Spock adopted Expression #6 (I am sure that you believe that completely incorrect information and as such I will only hold it against you marginally.)

"This science stuff is interesting and all but, Jimmy, it's been days! When are you going to be done talking to them so you can check if you got another mission or something that involves another planet that you get to take a shuttle to and…wait, why have you all stopped talking? Did someone come in when I didn't notice?" The boy looked up from the pad suddenly as he finally seemed to realize that no one had said a word and noted that they were all staring at him. "What are you all looking at?" The boy scrambled off of the table, staff held in a slightly defensive position as he whirled to face the corner of the room that he had previously been leaning in.

Jim blinked.

"No weird clouds or lights…no other people…nothing looks funny…well, funnier…" the boy muttered as poked his stick at the wall a few times before turning in a circle slowly, eyes scouring the room.

Jim blinked again.

"Dang, Jimmy, I can't see what you guys do this time. Which I'll grant is a switch." That was followed by what could only be described as a cautious twirl as the being kept looking around curiously. "Ugh, I hope it's not something with those wave length things that you tried to explain once? Or was it the fields?" While the staff stayed steady, the boy continued to turn in a circle. After a few rotations one of his hands lifted and tugged at his hair sharply. "Or was it field beams? You know I can never remember. I wish you'd slow down sometimes, you don't much lately. Rats. How do I let you know what I'm not seeing Jimmy? After that thing with the rocks and Ensign Mathers I'm nowhere near strong enough to mess with one of your computer pad thingies…."

Jim's eyes widened and shot over to Spock who inclined his head momentarily, acknowledging the mention that would need clarification later. He did remember something about how on the last away mission, when Mathers had been caught in rock slide, he had miraculously come out with only a few scrapes and a sprained ankle. The part that intrigued Jim the most on that, was that she had sworn up and down that she'd felt something push her out of the way of the thickest part of the rock fall.

If this being had been following them that long, well, Jim needed more information on the boy twirling in front of him.

"Hmm…. Seriously, what are you doing just staring at whatever it is? Aren't you going to do something so I know what's got you so distracted? You're getting slow Jimmy, come on!" In an almost absent gesture the boy stopped spinning and reached out towards Jim as if to poke him with the staff.

In an instant Spock had himself in between his captain and the boy, forcing Jim back (yelling indignant protests, of course), while Scotty nailed the panic button on the wall and Chekov dove for one of the (visible) phasers that were stashed in the Captain's office in case of (all too frequent in his opinion) boarding and pointing it at Jack.

The boy cocked his head, looking around again as he shifted, nimbly stepping to the side of the desk with his staff out and turning a complete 180 from Chekov's dead center aim to look behind him. "Thanks for the direction finally, Pavel. Where are you whatever you are? I want a whack at you before Jimmy's security beats you to a pulp and Spock nerve pinches you! Note to self, I still have got to learn to do that."

"Excuse me," Jim said to the boy's back, pushing his First Officer aside a little. For some reason, he felt just a bit disturbed that this version of his imaginary friend didn't seem to realize they were looking at him. Jack had always tried to hide it from Jimmy, but he remembered how much it had hurt the winter spirit when no one paid attention to him (and Jim seriously didn't want to analyze what that said about the "trauma" he'd been dealing with as a kid, thank you very much). He stepped forward towards the boy, staying out of Checkov's line of fire and shaking off Spock's grabbing hand.

The boy didn't even look at Jim, so he tried again.

"Excuse me, but I'd appreciate it if you would you turn around and face us, please. I'd love to know how you got in my office."

"Yeah whatever you are, turn and face the brat, would ya?" the white-haired kid echoed tightly.

Jim had blinked. "We're actually talking to you. Why do you look like him? Like Jack Frost?"

The utter stillness that took over the boy at that was absolute. Not a twitch or tremor, no words…

Then Security rushed into the room (his internal clock gave him a count on the response time, oh the drills they would be going through) and joined Chekov in pointing phasers at this manifestation of his one-time friend. At the swish of the doors heralding his Security, the boy spun and he stumbled back, falling into the wall, his staff clutched to his chest with white fingers and his skin paling even more.

"You're not talking to me," he whispered, sounding almost desperate. "Y-you can't be! You haven't seen me for so long, Jimmy…. Who are you talking to? It's not fair!" His eyes turned to blue fire and he whirled around jerkily again and again, eyes searching frantically. "Whoever you are I'll turn you into a sculpture for pretending to be me! It's bad enough that…don't you dare do this! I'll freeze you inch by inch so bad that you'll scream and beg for the mercy of Pitch's nightmares!"

Jim's eyes narrowed, and with one hand he waved off Spock while he took a deep breath and carefully reached up to grasp the staff so like the one he remembered from his childhood. When his hand came into contact with the wood, stopping the shaking of the staff, the boy froze, still as a winter morning just before dawn.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the boy turned to face him, eyes meeting his only a little less blindly than they had moments before. Jim couldn't help but smile at the site of Jack looking so scattered, though he knew this couldn't be real. Imaginary friends didn't come back as real beings other people could see years later. "I am talking to you, and to me—to us—you look like Jack Frost."

'Jack' seemed as if he wanted to faint.

"Y-you said…." He faded off and they stood, locked in this tableau for seconds that stretched into eternity. Then Jack pulled the staff out of Jim's hand, jerking as if he'd been burned, and darted back into the corner, looking absolutely terrified as he slid trembling to the floor and curled into a tight ball, muttering hurriedly. "No! Not real…you're imagining things again…. Wake up, Jack! Stop doing this to yourself! Jimmy can't see you, hasn't since that awful place, and you know it! You may be stupid enough to follow him still but you know he can't see you…he doesn't believe!"

The boy buried his heads in his crossed arms, the staff sliding to clatter quietly on the floor next to him. Jim couldn't quite make out the words the boy spoke after that, but he could guess that they were much more of the same.

Jim turned Spock for help, just a little lost on just how to proceed. He knew how to take care of intruders and he knew how to take care of traumatized kids, but he wasn't quite sure what to do when they were the same person. Spock just looked back at him with one eyebrow raised barely above the other and a particular tilt to his mouth, or Expression #7 (In this rare instance I believe you are more likely to come up with a satisfactory solution as this is too emotional for me to work with). Jim did not like that expression. He glanced at the other crew members in the room. Chekov seemed like he wanted to give the kid a hug while Scotty looked, well, like he understood all too well and empathized. The security officers were obviously trying to remain tough but even their stern images had frayed a little at the edges.

Jim was just about ready to decide to screw the rules and try to comfort the kid when a loud commotion in the hallway drew their attention.

"Oughtta my way! I don't hear shooting and I am going to take that idiotic kid that plays at Captain to task for scaring us all to death!" Jim turned to see his security quickly decide that a cowering kid was less of an immediate danger than CMO on a war path and moved out of the Doctor's way while trying to maintain a line of sight on the boy. Not an easy task and Jim would have found their antics rather funny if it weren't for the fact that he happened to be the object of Bones' ire.

Crap.

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Bones stared at the shivering, terrified child in the corner and then at all the slightly guilty looking people pointing phasers at said boy, followed by a glare he sent at Jim and Spock (who frankly looked like gob smacked idiots) before he sighed.

"I would think that just one of you could cover a kid! The rest of you, out!" The security officers all turned to glance at him, then back at the Captain unsurely so McCoy raised his voice a little for the next one. "Out!" He barked with a promise of extra physicals in his glare. They didn't need any more motivation. With some quick shuffling all the security officers, with the exception of 'Cupcake' (as Jim still called him), vacated the Captain's Office. Satisfied, Bones then checked over the other three members of the Senior Staff, who seemed more than happy to allow him to deal with the kid. Of course. With a roll of his eyes, Bones took a few steps closer until he was just out of arms reach of the shaking boy.

Kneeling slowly until he was mostly on the kid's current level, Bones settled himself in for a long wait.

It took a while for the shivering to slow, long enough in fact that Bones had begun to run through a list of sedatives while trying to figure out which would be least likely to hurt the kid. Based on his coloring he most likely wasn't human. Could he be part Andorian? Or maybe some other species? The hair coloring was too natural to be dyed, and nothing that wasn't visible from Bones distance would add that subtle of a blue pigment to the kid's skin without some serious surgery time which no doctor in good conscience would do to anyone that young; so many variables.

But surely enough, the trembling slowly ended.

By the time the youngster had stopped quivering completely Bones' knees were starting to ache, but he knew that proximity was important and wouldn't risk startling the kid by shifting. Couldn't let him think Bones was moving away, but wouldn't put him on the defensive by inching closer.

They stayed that way for a bit longer (ouch), and he couldn't quite glance over his shoulder to see what was happening as he heard near silent shifting. Finally, just when McCoy thought that the kid might have passed out, the boy's head eased up just enough that a sliver of blue eyes became visible over the crossed arms and focused on the doctor. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw Jim had come to stoop next to him, which caused the eyes to flick and focus on him like a laser.

The ice-blue eyes watched Jim warily, a type of desertion, loneliness and disbelief visible in them that had Bones parental instincts and ER experience aching to hug so tight that ribs cracked.

"Okay, so I think that we got off on the wrong foot, and I am sorry for that," Jim said, his voice even and low. "We were startled and confused by you appearing out of nowhere like that." A full body flinch from the tightly balled figure in the corner accompanied the end of that second sentence and McCoy blinked as he processed that, fitting a possible reason in with what little he'd seen so far and trying to come up with more likely scenarios based on the fact that the kid was not only on the ship but in the Captain's suite.

"I said something wrong again, didn't I?" Jim asked, voice at the same calm level. "I do that a lot, you know, stick my foot in my mouth since I talk so fast and so much." That brought a slight, kind of faraway smile to the boys pale lips. "This is a little weird for me, right now. And I seem to be at a bit of a disadvantage. You obviously know me, which is great! It means I don't have to bore you with my life story," he continued with a bright, megawatt grin that Bones knew he only used on potential one-night stands and reporters he'd been ordered to make nice with, and now apparently traumatized children that also happened to be a security breach.

The result was a bit more solid of a grin on its target and a mouth moving a little, as if the boy wanted to speak but couldn't quite bring himself to.

Jim waited a few moments, to see if the boy would pick up the courage to respond before he eventually continued. "Since you know me, you know that unless you hurt my friends or someone I need to protect, I'm generally a nice guy, right?" A tentative nod came, and even if it was coupled with a look of expectant failure. Bones couldn't help but give an internal sigh of relief. The kid was responding well enough, not completely catatonic….

"I'm glad you agree," Jim said, with that bright smile getting a little bigger. The shocked, barely hopeful look on the kids face, in Bones' humble opinion, was considerably more amazing. "So I think, that if you'll let me have a do over on that first question, I would like to ask are you okay, right now? Is there anything that I or my crew can do to help?" Jim raised his palm just a little, palm up in the boy's direction, as if offering a hand up if the boy wanted. The boy sat their stunned for a moment, before ever so warily reaching out his own hand, blue eyes trailing after it as it tapped Jim's hand experimentally looking with a kind of flabbergasted joy when the hand touched. The boy's eyes flew up to Jims, looking as he had been given the world. For a tense moment, nothing happened, and then the blue eyes suddenly broke, shattering into tears with a loud, aching howl of a sob as he threw himself at Jim, clutching at the Captain as if he were afraid the other would disappear at any moment.

As Jim carefully wrapped the boy in his arms, holding him as he choked and wept into his gold uniform top, he looked up to Bones with a dangerous glint to his eye, and glanced over his shoulder at Spock who nodded. Then the first officer dragged Scotty, Chekov and a silently protesting Cupcake out of the room with one last glance at the device on the Captain's desk and a look that meant the laws of physics and the universe in general were about to get re-written.

XXXXX

Jim stared at the bed across the Sick Bay. It currently held their unconscious stowaway/intruder/whatever he was. Jim wasn't even sure how to start writing his report on this to command, having had no time to question the boy since as soon as the kid had stopped crying into Jim's shirt, Scotty's device had started sparking.

The boy had drawn in, seizing Jim even tighter to himself and screaming in pain.

Jim had had to shout orders to Spock and Scotty over the rush of so many bodies barreling into his office in result, asking if he was alright (now that he thought about it, the boy really did sound like him). While his First Officer and Chief Engineer had gotten the device working again, there had been a moment when the device shut off completely, and the being that looked so much like his Jack disappeared, causing shouts of surprise from his security and Jim fall back and crab walk away from the area a little in shock.

Then the machine cut in again and the boy was there, right where Jim had apparently left him, eyes wide, locked on him with what he could only term as betrayal before another painful jolt seized the boy after another quickly quelled spark fit and he finally collapsed into unconsciousness.

In the year and a half that he had been Captain, their crew had run into some truly strange stuff at the direction of an Ambassador Spock prodded Starfleet. They'd seen nearly omnipotent beings, wonders of science, cultures that gave new definition to the word 'strange', and made all sorts of discoveries even the Old Man with all his experience in what could (had?) happen marvel. He'd been thinking over what the Ambassador had told them of their other-selves adventures, and he was sure that wandering across a version of his childhood friend had never been mentioned. He couldn't help but wonder if any other versions of him had had something like this happen. He snorted a little and ran his hands over his face roughly, trying to snap himself out of it. Most of the other hims were probably so perfect and popular and loved and un-messed up that an imaginary friend was a ludicrous idea.

"I don't like that look, kid," Bones grumped from his left, and Jim smiled at his best friend.

"You don't like most of my looks, Bones." The Doctor tilted his head in acquiescence as he too turned to look at the mystery patient. "What are you picking up from him?"

"It's weird, Jim." Jim arched an eyebrow at him. "I know, I know…. Not much but, you remember that world with the telepaths, how they tried to fool us with the info on the scanners and the fake survivors camp before they realized that we knew everything?"

Jim nodded, thinking back on one of the first missions that the Old Man had finagled Starfleet into sending them on, and thinking on how Talosians had tried to integrate the crash survivor Vina to the crew. With the species' general love of learning and wish to gain new experiences, they were quickly being assimilated nicely into the diplomatic corps and some of the exploratory crews as much as their physical frailties would allow. There had been some initial trouble as they worked out what was appropriate to collect and what wasn't, but Jim still counted that one as a win in stabilizing the wounded Federation. Still they did occasionally manage to weird Jim out with their lack of privacy rules, and he wasn't a fan of how they occasionally got distracted or forgot that they were around a psy-null species and made him hallucinate.

"Well, it's a bit like that. Our instruments can tell that something is there, but nothing matches like I expect it to. The sensors read him as room temp even though when I touch him he's colder than a sick Vulcan. I can feel what seems like a rather slow heartbeat, but we don't register a pulse. We can get a general pattern in the head area that seems like brain activity, but if we hook him up directly it tells us he's a vegetable. It's like he's there but not. The only thing I can think of is trying to mess with that ion thing, but unless we need to I ain't willing to do that since it causes the kid so much pain."

Jim nodded. Weird actually seemed to sum that up nicely. "What about his staff and clothes? You heard from Spock on those yet?"

"The hobgoblin hasn't come out of M'Benga's office yet," Bones said with a scowl, pointing to the side office that Spock had taken over as a mini lab when it became apparent they couldn't separate the items from the device.

Jim had to sigh at the thought of dealing with his two closest friends after they had been forced by the device's limited range and the propensity of the Boy's clothes and staff to disappear if taken too far away from it to share space and resources.

He couldn't wait for Scotty and Chekov to finish rigging a few more of those devices.

"Grand."

The two stood there a bit longer. Jim knew he should start trying to make enough sense of this to report, but he was still glued to the image of one of his only childhood friends laying still as death on the bio-bed, dwarfed by the red hospital gown that Bones' scarily efficient nursing staff had changed the kid into.

"Captain." Jim turned to look at Janice Rand, blond hair in her normal intimidating updo. His Yeoman was holding out at pad to him that had a flashing message in lovely priority red. Oh the timing…

He took the pad with a quick thanks, and after glancing at the privacy setting, met Bones eyes gleefully. Then he smirked evilly, and darted into the man's office calling out his security overrides, causing it to shut despite the doctor's cursing and waving fist in the range of the motion detectors. He loved taking over Bones' office for legitimate reasons that the man couldn't do anything about other than gripe. Just the thought of Bones locked on the other side of the doors made him smile despite knowing that the message was most likely going to order them to a really sucky mission.

Jim placed his hand against the pad and after a quick scan the message opened, showing Admiral Bartlett. Jim scowled.

"Captain Kirk. On behalf of Starfleet Command, congratulations on successfully finding a rich Dilithium source for the Federation." Yeah, yay for managing to successfully complete the mission despite the initial surveys not showing the instability of the region, Jim thought meanly as the list of injured crewman and damaged equipment from the last Away Mission ran through his head. It taught him the lesson to always triple check the stupid prelim reports as their little trip had come a tad too close to killing his people (especially Mathers) for Jim's liking.

"Your next mission to New Vulcan has been reassigned to the Lexington. We are placing you on a priority mission instead." The Admiral's hand twitched and a star chart with a blinking red light took over the screen along with a side bar of sensor readings.

"We have detected some unusual readings near the Klingon Boarder, and your ship is being tasked with investigating it. The signatures vaguely resemble those given to us by the Ambassador as early Romulan Cloaking Technology."

Kirk scowled. Oh yeah….. Sucky.

"We know for a fact that the Narada was being held by the Klingons prior to the attack." Oh yeah, and that point had been tricky for the politicians to deal with, if the Klingons had been up front with the Federation, Vulcan might have been saved and the Kelvin avenged. Jim still wasn't sure what to think about that privately although he toed the Federation line in front of the cameras. "While we are fairly confident that their claims of not being able to reverse engineer the future technology are accurate, if this is them taking the first steps into being able to use Cloaks, we want to know and we want it shut down, now."

Jim had no particular issues with that.

"Stick to our side of the Border unless absolutely necessary. If you are forced to cross, under no circumstances get caught. Relationships are tense right now and the last thing we need is what could be seen as an aggressive act putting fuel on the fire. Given the delicate nature of this situation you will have a cover mission announced to general crew for use with any inquiring parties. You'll be doing check-ins with these frontier colonies near the Border region in question."

Three green lights appeared in the general vicinity of the blinking red lights.

"One is a week behind on a 3 month check in, and the other 2 are due for their annual infrastructure review."

The star charts disappeared. "All appropriate information on the cover mission will be forwarded as per normal at your next subspace exchange. An in-depth packet on the sensor readings will be waiting under standard encryptions in that data dump and you are cleared to share anything that has been discussed in this briefing with members of your senior staff only, and after that only as absolutely needed.

Good luck."

The Admiral nodded to him after a final farewell and the message ended. Kirk scowled, perfect. Just what he needed when they were dealing with another unprecedented experience. Klingons….

Suddenly a crash came from outside of Bones' office and, after wiping the pad, Jim jumped up and rushed out into Sickbay. Rand quickly took the pad from him and at his nod started the standard practice to completely eliminate the message from the easily stolen pad. A back up copy of the orders would be on Kirk's office computer, but the Federation felt it was better to be safer than sorry with the less encrypted pads and dangerous info.

Once that was taken care of, Jim took in the sickbay and saw the Jack Frost look-alike standing on the bio-bed with a glare fit to kill on his face and a hypospray in hand ready to throw. Bones stood warily in front of a wall of Doctors and Nurses who were eying the boy uneasily with the remnants of what looked like a tricorder smashed at their feet, obviously a victim of the boy's temper and aim.

Jim was actually a little impressed with the fact the kid could break it by throwing it. Tricorders where made for away missions and could survive nearly anything. Even Spock launching one into a solid rock wall when he'd been a little high on that weird species of tree a few planets back hadn't been able to do much more than dent one.

"Well, looks like someone was having some fun," Jim said with a smile as he carefully stepped between his medical staff and mysterious passenger. "I know it's a little weird waking up in a strange place, bu-"

Jim was interrupted by a little jerk from the boy who hastily mumbled something he didn't catch. "I'm sorry, I heard you but I couldn't understand what you were saying." For some reason he knew that this creature would imitate enough of his Jack's reactions that he needed to make sure he understood that Jim had heard him. This kid though, seemed about a thousand times worse than he remembered his fri—his imaginary friend being.

The kid looked around nervously and bit his lip. Then he opened his mouth and started blurting words that made no sense.

"Not strange… It's… you like it here. Bones yells but he doesn't ever even pretend to ignore you so you like it here… We spend a lot of time here. Bridge is home but this is… second home? Like a tree fort - the safe place and it's not strange."

Jim blinked over at him. "What?" he asked.

"Second home?" Bones muttered with far too much amusement in his voice.

Jim rolled his eyes. Jack (no, the look alike) seemed troubled, his face contorted in concentration.

"Did I say that wrong? Or…oh! I shouldn't have said that! You don't like it when—" he moved forward a little only to suddenly cut off and flinch in obvious pain, hand going to his side. "Oh yeah, there was an ow! What the…. I mean I don't normally…. Wait! Where's my staff!"

Then, as if he wasn't under any threat by the medical personnel he'd been throwing things at with deadly force before and the Security at their side, he jumped down from the bio bed and began examining the space under it.

"It's hurt! Where are you? I can feel you nearby! Hey…come on." He continued on in this manner (even resorting to whistling in a manner reminiscent of Archer calling his beagles for a few minutes) as he searched the room all too thoroughly for anyone who was only marginally familiar with the medical room ever could.

That made Bones nervous and a little angry, which in turn made Jim nervous enough to not wave off the security guards who had been looking on in confusion throughout the entire encounter.

Then Jack started to panic. "No, seriously, where is it? I have to find it! I have to find you! If Pitch finds you…no, wait, Pitch isn't here. Is he? I don't think so. Maybe no one believes in him either even though he sent me here? That's his fear too…right staff? Where are you?" the boy asked getting frantic. He spun suddenly and yelled at Jim, advancing a few steps. "WHERE IS MY STAFF?!"

The security guards leveled their weapons at him, and this time Jim didn't do anything to stop them. Then the boy seemed to realize what he'd done and blinked in confusion, backing away slowly.

"I-I'm sorry, Jimmy. I didn't mean…" He trailed off, eyes darting around frantically as if he was hunting for a way out. "It shouldn't have scared you," came the timid follow up. "No one's supposed to see me. No one can hear me. I don't exist…"

"Bull!" Bones said suddenly, parental fury raging in his eyes as he stepped forward and huffed in the kid's direction. "You do too exist and I never want to hear you say otherwise again, get it?"

The Jack-look-alike stared at them with saucer-like eyes. "B-but…then why? Why didn't anyone talk to me? Why did Jimmy and the moon leave me alone for so long? Why?"

Okay, that last sentence made no sense at all whatsoever. Still, a quick glance at Bones showed that the man was in a full on protective swing. Ready and willing to take anyone down that got in his way of caring for the childlike being in front of him.

"Jim," Bones said with a quiet level of confidence that normally only rang through his voice when he was about to do an exactingly scary bit of life saving or Jim had done something particularly stupid that he had to clean up. "Get the Vulcan to give the kid his toy back. It's obviously a comfort object and I think it would lessen some of the shock he's going through."

Jim turned cocked his head, considering the idea of anything that could be measured as a weapon in the hands of someone as obviously unhinged as this Jack look-a-like before he nodded, conceding the point. "Good idea."

The boy had just eyed them warily, shrinking back until he was practically huddled against the bio-bed, his eyes kept flicking back and forth from Jim to Bones as Jim carefully slipped up to the door and carefully triggered the chime.

"Come in," Spock's answer snapped through the com as the doors slid open. Jim peeked in to look at his first officer, who didn't even glance up from the microscope he was looking through. Jim cautiously approached the table that had a large spread of sciencey, hand held gadgets.

"Jim, I take it you are not here to deliver the scanner I requested Ensign Cartwright bring?"

"Nah, the kid is up, having a complete freak out over his Staff, claiming that it's hurt or something; we're thinking that it's a good idea to get it back to him for a bit until he clams down."

Spock tilted his head up to meet Jim's eyes, "Fascinating." Oh, that was definitely Spock's Expression #4 (I find that exceedingly cool, really, tell me more!) and Jim couldn't help but smirk.

"What's fascinating?" he questioned, raising his own eyebrow. Spock carefully slid the specimen dish out from under the microscope and lying on the glass was a sliver of wood, obviously plucked from the staff.

"Our guest, based on his assertion that his staff was 'hurt,' obviously has some type of link to it and could tell when I took my sample." Jim stared at it, not quite sure what to think.

"What about his clothes, Spock?"

His first officer waved a hand vaguely in the direction of a few other sample dishes. "Since you have not relayed any information about the boy being obviously concerned about them, I am inclined to believe that no such link exists with those items, as I sampled them first."

"Hmm," Jim hummed as he carefully reached for the staff. "Weird. Let's see if we can get the kid to sit down for some more tests later. Do what you can with the sample that you've already taken for now."

Spock nodded as Jim picked up the wooden crook that looked so familiar. He almost gasped as a tangible thrum of energy shot through his hand. He glanced down at the wood, surprised. It felt almost exactly the same as it had when he'd 'picked up' Jack's staff as a child. The nostalgia and wariness that hit him in the feelings wake almost made him physically ache, and Jim turned to head back into the main med bay only to be surprised when the doors flew open a bit too early and Jack darted into the room with a scrambling Bones right after him, both trailed by a Security Officer.

Jim blinked when the staff almost magically seemed to jump from his hands to the boy's he moved so fast. "YAY!" screamed the boy, practically jumping up and down in joy as he actually nuzzled the length. "You're here, I was so scared that something had happened, I can still feel it though, what happened?"

Blue eyes quickly darted around the room, and with that same disturbing nippiness he spotted the shard in Spock's sample dish and snatched that up too. With unerring speed, he found the section Spock had pried it from and gingerly slotted it back in. He placed his hand over the spot and closed his eyes.

Jim wasn't quite sure what he was doing when suddenly the boy's hand, along with some threading areas on the staff, flashed blue for a moment and he opened his eyes again. A quick swing of the staff and the boy smiled at Jim before hoping to sit lightly on one of M'Benga's shelving units, narrowly avoiding knocking over one of the man's near priceless Vulcan artifacts.

Then the white capped head tilted in Spock's direction as if assessing? Re-assessing maybe? For whatever reason the Jack look-a-like seemed to be reconsidering Jim's First Officer. Spock on the other hand didn't appear to care anything about the gaze on him and was staring in rapt contemplation at the staff and the sample piece that looked like it had been magically reattached with not even a line or crack showing there had been a separation at all.

Spock finally glanced up from the staff to the mischievous smirk that was slowly spreading on the white haired boys face and summed up his reaction with the all-encompassing "interesting." Whelp, that was the official sign that there would be no chess nights or literature debates any time soon. When Spock used the word 'interesting' to describe something, everything that could get delegated to his two aides and other department heads was immediately pushed away and Spock all but lived in the labs for the next two weeks at the least. Jim gave in and dropped his head into his hand as he realized how relatively gleeful the Vulcan sounded at his latest research subject, which most likely meant it'd be at least a month this time.

Oh yeah, an upcoming mission dealing with Klingons, a randomly 'magic' kid that shouldn't exist from Jim's past, an entertained to the point of semi-distracting half-Vulcan first officer and Bones in full on parental hissy fit.

He mentally upgraded the upcoming mission and reports to Starfleet from 'sucky' to 'I almost wish this was the Borg.'

XXXXX

End Chapter 2

XXXXX

A couple of notes: THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT! :) - end of caps lock over kill.

A couple of people touched on some fun points that will definitely be brought up over the course of this story, so I can't answer a lot of the question (no reading the diary, spoilers! :))

1. Thanks as always Obi. :)

2. "Colder than a sick Vulcan" - true fact, according to cannon, Vulcans actually have a lower body temp compared to humans, there are people out there on the web that have explained it better then I ever could - I would rec searching for the info, it's pretty cool actually. :)

3. Talosians - Check out the TOS story which originally introduced us to Pike, wicked fun.

4. Why I picked an Ion device - mirror verse, enough said.

5. At the advice of my Beta, switched Timestamps from "Years Later" to "Years After Arrival" - might change it in the first chapter later if it bugs people.

6. Uh I think that's it. I am pretty open if you spot something that I missed or didn't explain well enough.


End file.
